Beyond '1984'

In Two Earlier Novels, Orwell
Examines the Tyranny of Money

By

Cynthia Crossen

Updated April 6, 2007 12:01 a.m. ET

If you went to high school in America in the past half-century, you almost certainly read George Orwell. His two best-known novels, "Animal Farm" and "1984," are English curriculum perennials, and rightly so.

But Mr. Orwell wrote much more than these two books -- four other novels and several volumes of nonfiction, essays and poetry. "Animal Farm" and "1984," both published in the 1940s, explored the relationship between despotic governments and their citizens. Two of his earlier...